


Seconds Left

by Beautiful Chaos (Venkaskribbles)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1663343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venkaskribbles/pseuds/Beautiful%20Chaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was screaming, whole body quivering with rage. He shook her hard, sword arm pressing her shoulder back against him. She could feel him tensing, breath quickening…she had seconds left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seconds Left

**Author's Note:**

> Oddly enough I wrote and posted it on Tumblr this before the Season Two finale, so my husband and I were having a good chuckle at how close I managed to call this scene. Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing! I do this for the love of Olicity!

Even before she could hear or see him, she knew he was close. Slade’s grip on her arm closed tighter, pulling at a sharper angle behind her back as he widened his stance to prepare for a foe she could not even see. It was strange how well she had begun to read the body language of warriors, the smallest of movements and twinges as their muscles sensed a fight even before a battle had begun. Coiled instinct.

Slade made a low sound in his chest, a content and satisfied octave that made Felicity’s skin crawl. This was it. The moment that he had been dreaming of for years…obsessively plotting and working towards in the demented hell of his brain.

Breath pulled from her lungs in a hiss at the renewed pain in her shoulder, her heart pounding in her chest. Everything about this was wrong, none of this made any possible sense.

“Please don’t do this.” Her voice, ragged with pain and fear, pleaded with the force of nature that held her whole world on the edge of his shattered sanity. He took a slow breath and rested his forehead against the back of her skull, double edged sword sliding from its sheath as he whispered against her ear.

“Even now…you are not asking for yourself are you? I can see why he chose you.” She felt a razor thin twinge of pain at her throat, a flush of warmth welling upwards to tell her that he had drawn blood. A warning. “Miss Smoak, your fate was sealed the moment you chose to stay with him….isn’t that right kid?” He looked up from behind her head, towards the shadows in front of them. A shape began to take form, a beautifully familiar silhouette.

Any comfort that shadow gave her faded the moment she heard his voice. She had witnessed so many sides of Oliver, his rage, his kindness…his despair. But she had never heard him like this. A voice so cold and full of fury it was unrecognizable.

_“Let. Her. Go.”_

He stepped fully into the light, his leathers dirty and stained with blood from his fighting in the city. Felicity watched him carefully, her keen mind rapidly assessing his injuries and exhaustion. Anyone else might have missed it, but she knew his movements like her own, he was already favoring his injured knee, and a long gash marred his right side. Slade, mirakuru-enhanced, was fresh. She bit down hard on her inner cheek, the taste of copper sharpening her focus. She was furious. She had had enough of people not fighting fair.

Her right hand, free from Slade’s control moved slowly towards the pocket of her jacket. This was probably going to get her killed…but if it could save Oliver…. _Five inches away…_

“I warned you kid. All this time you never even guessed? You are the idiot I thought you were. Years ago, when I began all of this, I had planned to kill Laurel…the way you had carried her photo around the island like a love sick puppy…but as I watched you, imagine my surprise to find how much you had come to need her.” With a jerk he released her arm, viciously yanking her head back by her hair, exposing her throat completely. The hairline cut stretched painfully, causing fresh blood to well a slow trickle down the pale expanse of skin. She bit down the cry that threatened to escape, seeing Oliver begin to lunge forward at Slade’s movement.

_Three inches away…._

The blade pressed against her throat once more and Oliver froze.

“Felicity….” Oliver began, wrenching back his hood. Behind his mask she could see his eyes. Those beautiful eyes she loved so much, wild with terror. Gathering every once of courage she had, she schooled her features. Her distress would not help him get through this. A long shuttering breath escaped her pale lips, she needed more oxygen. The edges of her vision had begun to narrow. 

She could feel Slade shouting, a rumbling menace against her back. But her ears had begun to stop working as adrenaline narrowed her focus, and all she could hear was a deep tone behind the rush of blood in her ears. They were shouting…screaming. She just kept focused on Oliver’s face.

A sense of calm began to suffuse her bones as her hand finally slipped inside of her pocket, fingers closing around the syringe. When he had come to take her, she had only seconds before he broke down the door…running the calculations in her head like one of her servers, she had made the best choice she could.

“You wear Shado’s hood…but you carry Felicity’s bow. She has given you strength when you had none. Gave you a future when you would have had only darkness…she is everything I could have had with Shado if you had not taken her from me!!” He was screaming, whole body quivering with rage. He shook her hard, sword arm pressing her shoulder back against him. She could feel him tensing, breath quickening…she had seconds left.

Her hand moved out of her pocket, thumb twisting to anchor on the plunger as the world slowed.

Oliver froze. She would never know for sure if he knew what was about to happen. Perhaps it was instinct, or trust, or something else entirely. But his eyes never left Slade…never betrayed her movement.

She looked at Oliver one more time, trying to burn every line of his face into her mind. God. She wanted to live.

With a perfectly calculated arch, she swung her right arm downwards, plunging the syringe deep into the vulnerable laced siding of his body armor, sending the cure into his fury filled veins.

 

The End.


End file.
